


tick tick tick

by mnemememory



Series: black powder [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, I think I'm funny, Implied Relationship, Time Travel Fix-It, crack treated with vague seriousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-04 20:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15849003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: The first time (sort of) Caleb meets Beau, she punches him in the nose.“You motherfucker,” she says, throwing herself into a chair next to Nott and waving down Adelaine the waitress. “You owe me so many drinks.”(or; the time-travel fix-it that absolutely no one asked for but I wrote anyway)





	tick tick tick

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**tick tick tic** **k**

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The first time (sort of) Caleb meets Beau, she punches him in the nose.

“You motherfucker,” she says, throwing herself into a chair next to Nott and waving down Adelaine the waitress. “You owe me _so many drinks_.”

“Hello, Beauregard,” Nott says. “It’s very nice to see you again.”

“Don’t talk to me,” Beau says, and then turns to face Adelaine. “I need alcohol. So much alcohol. He’s paying.”

“I will pay for it,” Caleb promises, reaching into his purse and pulling out three silver coins. He places them onto the table in front of them, stacking one atop the other. Adelaine gives them a long look, before scooping up the coins and walking briskly away.

“Make it strong!” Beau calls after her.

“It is good to see you, Beau,” Caleb says, cautiously. There is blood dripping down from his nose. He feels around the bridge, making sure that nothing is broken, before staunching the flow with the sleeve of his threadbare jacket.

“No,” Beau says. “No, don’t talk to me, I’m not drunk enough for this.”

Caleb gives a heavy sigh. “Beauregard –”

“ _CALEB_!”

Caleb barely has time to gauge the oncoming line of attack before he is assaulted by something very fast and very blue. Both he and the aggressor are knocked off the chair and onto the ground. Caleb’s head hits the floor with a painful _crack_ , and he groans as the chair flattens onto his hip. He tries to get up, but Jester is a very happy (and incredibly strong) limpet at his side, severely limiting his range of movement.

Fjord follows after her at a more sedate – though still purposeful – pace, and easy smile settled onto his handsome face.

“Now, now, Jester,” he says, amusement plain. “Let him breathe.”

“Hello,” Caleb wheezes out, patting Jester on the back. She does not get up. Caleb tries to push her away, before realising the ultimate futility of the action. He lies back down and stares at the ceiling.

“Don’t act like you can’t hug people, Caleb,” Jester says, face buried into his neck. “I know you can hug people. You’ve hugged me before.”

“I am not much of a hugger, my friend,” Caleb says, though he does concede to putting his arms around her shoulders and squeezing. That seems to be just enough, because Jester gives a dizzy laugh and backs off. As she gets to her feet, all the windows of the inn slam open at the same time, sending a blast of cold air into the otherwise warm interior. A few patrons let out simultaneous startled exclamations, some more vicious than mean spirited than others. One man drops his flagon of beer onto the ground.

Jester smirks down at Caleb, and then effortlessly lifts him to his feet.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Jester says, patting him on the head and then picking up his chair for him. “You are an _excellent_ hugger.”

The knock to his head has Caleb’s nose bleeding afresh, and he’s almost gone through the entire elbow of his sleeve. Nonchalant, Jester pulls out a handkerchief and smushes it into Caleb’s face with just a little too much force.

Blood dripping from his chin and onto his collar, and Caleb couldn’t be happier.

“It’s certainly been a while,” Fjord says, keeping his voice light as he settled in next to Beau. She doesn’t bother acknowledging him, too busy stealing Caleb’s drink and downing it in one large gulp. “A few years, by my guess.”

“I am not entirely sure,” Caleb admits, and there’s something hot burning in his stomach, warmer than a campfire on a cold winter’s night. “I have tried counting, but.”

“It’s a bit difficult to keep track of it all,” Fjord finishes for him.

Beau loudly slurps down the last of Caleb’s beer and side-eyes Nott. “You usually have alcohol,” she says.

Nott hugs her beer closer to her chest, porcelain mask firmly affixed to her face. “Don’t even think about it!” she says, teeth sticking over the edge. She looks very young, and very feral. Caleb kind of wants to hug her, just to prove to himself that he can. “I don’t have my flask, yet – I am _not_ sharing this with you, Beau, back off.”

“You’ve gotten nasty,” Beau says. She’s about to say something else – probably unflattering to the extreme, probably with the potential for a bar fight – when Adelaine comes in with the biggest tankard of ale Caleb has ever seen. Beau’s eyes brighten, and she gives Adelaine a wide smile and a wink.

“Thanks,” she says, and promptly attempts to drown herself. Fjord has to drag it off of her before anything unsettling happens.

From the way Adelaine is looking them over (Jester attempting to strangle Nott with the power of her biceps, Fjord wrestling an _intensely_ uncooperative Beau, Caleb _bleeding_ _over the table_ ), they probably seem a little insane.

“Call me over if you need anything else,” she says. She doesn’t sound particularly enthused.

“Thanks for the alcohol,” Beau calls after her, and there’s a calming predictability to her rakish grin. Caleb counts them in his head – one, two, three, four –

The door opens.

They – all of them – almost break their necks with how fast they turn their heads. Caleb’s heart is pounding something awful in his chest. There’s a painful kind of certainty to the “knowing”, to the understanding, to the – weight, of it all. Caleb’s shoulders ache.

Mollymauk Tealeaf walks into the bar, breezing past the doorway with a dazzling flourish of his multi-coloured coat. His smile is sharp and his eyes glitter red, all flamboyance and cheery certainty. Flyers flash in-between his long fingers as he slides them along tables and into the open hands of the unwary.

There’s a shadow trailing at his back, large enough to be impossible to miss. Yasha doesn’t move more than a few feet away from Molly at any given point in time, eyes following the progression around the room with laser-like precision.

Caleb watches out of the corner of his eye as Beau makes a half-aborted attempt to get to her feet. Yasha looks over their way, taking in their clustered grouping with a blank face.

Molly comes to their table, finally – finally. Frumpkin is curled around his ankles, and there is still blood running down Caleb’s face, and everything is _finally_ correct with how the world works.

“Mollymauk Tealeaf,” Molly says, giving a low bow. Behind him, Yasha rolls her eyes. “At your service!”

…

…

Caleb has a Life’s Work.

It’s as grandiose as they come, he likes to think – altering the very fabric of existence. It’s possible. People have done it before. During darker times, bigger times, people have changed the fate of the world and withheld the heavy embrace of death.

(Oh, and the Mighty Nein regularly use it to win drinking contests).

But resurrection – no matter how complete – will not sooth the stitches in Caleb’s soul. He wants something _bigger_. He wants something _better_. He wants to have never made the mistakes he has made in the first place.

Impossibly, one day –

He finds it.

…

…

Caleb meets Nott in the middle of a robbery, because some things just never change.

“What are you doing here?” he hisses, ducking back from a ray of light as city guards survey the area with large flashlights and vicious-looking dogs. Caleb is not a dog person. “I mean – who are you?”

Nott looks unimpressed about everything, though that could just be the way her eyes gleam wild in the low light. Her mask is off, and her teeth are bare, and she has a tight hand wrapped around Caleb’s forearm like she’s worried he’s going to disappear.

“Don’t give me that!” she whisper-yells, which – remarkably – does not immediately alert the guards to their position. “Do you know how long it’s been, Caleb? _Do you_? I’ve been trying for _weeks_ to remember which store I had been casing out – this happened _years_ ago, and my memory isn’t the best –”

Before he can think better of it, Caleb sweeps her up into a hug.

…

…

Yasha is surveying their little group with the distinct impression of a mother duck who finally has all her ducklings in one place.

She is sitting next to Beau – Fjord having surrendered his place with only a few good-natured grumblings – with Molly in her direct line of sight. He looks visibly startled, though he hides it well. His words are slick with charm. Still, there’s something off about his carnival spiel this time around. It takes him a few good five minutes to break, which is better than Caleb would have given him the first time around.

“Are these friends of yours, Yasha?” he says.

Yasha doesn’t look up from her own tankard of ale, arm slung low around Beau’s waist. “No.”

Jester pouts. She’s been vibrating in her seat since the moment Molly walked into the tavern. It has taken previously unknown depths of patience not to grab him in a vicious, bloody hug right there and then. “Yasha,” she says, sounding theatrically heartbroken. “Am I not your friend?”

Yasha sighs. “Yes, we are friends.”

“How about Nott?” Jester demands.

“Her too.”

“What about _Caleb_? Is he still your friend?”

Caleb gives her a narrow look, but she doesn’t even bother glancing in his direction. Yasha takes another long swig of her ale.

“Yes, we are friends.”

Caleb lets out a breath he hadn’t even been aware of holding. He hadn’t been particularly loud about it, but Nott gives him a sharp look anyway. “Caleb is _my friend_ as well,” she says, loud enough that the rest of the table sits back and takes notice.

“We are _definitely_ friends, Caleb,” Jester says, beaming. “We’re all friends! Oh, I missed you guys _so much_.”

Yasha looks Molly dead in the eye. “I have never seen these people in my life.”

…

…

They visit the circus again. Molly undoubtably thinks they’re all crazy, and Yasha actually has a paying job that isn’t “freelance monster killer”.

“You should let us keep our weapons this time,” Beau says, trying futilely to hide her staff behind her back. “You know us. It’s fine.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Yasha says. Molly barks out a sharp laugh, which is soundly ignored. He starts moving back into the tent, but Yasha’s sharp glance pins him to the sport. She has him well trained. Caleb watches on, amused. “And I have to confiscate all your weapons for security purposes.”

“Yasha!” Beau protests, but Yasha just leans forward to grab Beau’s staff right out of her hands. “Hey! At least give me the same deal as last time!”

“No.”

“This is robbery,” Beau says, shoving the money into Molly’s hands and then turning to face the rest of them, hands folded petulantly across her chest.

“I’ll pay for everyone else,” Nott says. Beau gapes at her.

“Wait –”

Yasha solemnly takes the money (from where he’s standing, Caleb counts short, though that doesn’t seem to bother her overmuch) and ushers them inside. She does not take away anyone else’s weapons.

This time, there is no killer frog, because months ago (Yasha says) she had taken one look at Kylre and said, placidly, “Gee, that kind of looks like a fiend.” He had then proceeded to try and rip her throat out, which had led some credence to her offhand observation.

…

…

For most of his life, Caleb has been afraid of fire.

As a child, he would light candles with a simple _tug_ of his stomach, watch as they sputtered light into the shadows and made them deeper, darker. His friends had delighted at the game, loved the way he could blink and leave a room differ than when he found it. They grew bored, over time, but in the beginning things had seemed so wonderful, so – well. Magical.

“Oh no,” Caleb says, voice bland as he stares at the unlit candle. “I can’t do it.”

Trent Ikathon gives Astrid a sharp look. She frowns at him, fingers moving in slow anxious circles at the base of her wrist.

“Caleb?” she says.

“It’s too hard,” Caleb says. “I’m too tired. Maybe another day?”

“You did it _yesterday_ ,” Astrid hisses, face mortified. She turns to Ikathon. “I don’t know what’s the matter with him, he –”

“Work ethic,” Ikathon says, bloodless lips drawn into a thin smile. “Is just as important as raw talent.”

“I’m so embarrassed,” Caleb says, channelling his inner Caduceus. Astrid groans and buries her face into her hands.

(Twelve-year-old Caleb whispers quiet to twelve-year-old Astrid: “Don’t let them pull you in. Don’t let them change you.”

She does anyway, because she’s always been too smart to listen to Caleb, so why should she start now? Caleb watches her go and hooks fire-resistance charms into the bedrock of his house.

He does not follow her).

…

…

“I’m leaving the circus,” Yasha announces to Gustav the next day.

Molly looks over at her. “You are?”

“So is Molly,” she adds.

“I am?”

Caleb wishes that he wouldn’t look so delighted.

…

…

The problem with time travel – especially with _extremely experimental_ and _possibly accidental_ time travel – is that Caleb has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. He’s got some things right, at least.

“If you’re going to do this again,” Jester says, when they set out. “A little warning next time would be very much appreciated.”

“Yeah,” Fjord says. “Maybe just yell something right beforehand. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience, waking up and not seeing any of you all.”

“I was very confused,” Jester says. “My Mama was also very confused.”

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Molly says cheerily.

Yasha doesn’t say anything. The look that she gives him is more than enough.

“Now we just have to go and get Caduceus,” Beau says. “And we’ll be good to go. But yeah, Caleb – next time this happens, I’m going to give you more than just a broken nose if we don’t talk about it _extensively_ beforehand.”

“Do not worry, my friends,” Caleb says. He’s almost skipping along the road, with how light he feels. “I do not think this will be necessary. Once was enough. The next time we go through my hometown, I will introduce you to my parents.”

…

…

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to Not the Fic I Promised This Week. Someday I'm going to finish my Vox Machina stuff, but evidently today is not that day.
> 
> I'm thinking of making this into a series - I esp. want to do a meet-up with Caduceus, but we'll see, haha. In any case, hope you enjoyed this, and I'll see you next week!
> 
> (edit: 07/09/2018 - you convinced me! Now a series :)


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